Welcome to “Bomb Dog U,” Where Pooches Are Trained to Thwart Terrorism

When I first meet a young Labrador named Merry, she is clearing her nostrils with nine or ten sharp snorts before she snuffles along a row of luggage pieces, all different makes and models. They’re lined up against the wall of a large hangar on a country road outside Hartford, Connecticut. This is where MSA Security trains what are known in the security trade as explosive detection canines, or EDCs. Most people call them bomb dogs.

The luggage pieces joined shrink-wrapped pallets, car-shaped cutouts, and concrete blocks on the campus of MSA’s “Bomb Dog U.” Dogs don’t need to be taught how to smell, of course, but they do need to be taught where to smell—along the seams of a suitcase, say, or underneath a pallet, where the vapors that are heavier than air settle.

In the shrouded world of bomb-dog education, MSA is an elite academy. Its teams deploy mostly to the country’s big cities, and each dog works with one specific handler, usually for eight or nine years. MSA also furnishes dogs for what it describes only as “a government agency referred to by three initials for use in Middle East conflict zones.”

Strictly speaking, the dog doesn’t smell the bomb. It deconstructs an odor into its components, picking out the culprit chemicals it has been trained to detect. Zane Roberts, MSA’s former lead canine trainer and current program manager, uses a cooking analogy: “When you walk into a kitchen where someone is making spaghetti sauce, your nose says, Aha, spaghetti sauce. A dog’s nose doesn’t say that. Instinctively, it says tomatoes, garlic, rosemary, onion, oregano.” It’s the handler who says spaghetti sauce or, in this case, bomb.

MSA’s dogs arrive at headquarters when they are between a year and a year and a half old. They begin building their vocabulary of suspicious odors by working with rows of more than 100 identical cans laid out in a grid. Ingredients from the basic chemical families of explosives are placed in random cans.

Merry works eagerly down the row, wagging her tail briskly and pulling slightly on the leash. This is a bomb dog’s idea of a good time. Snort, snort, sniff, snort, snort, sniff, snort, snort, sniff. Suddenly, Merry sits down. All bomb dogs are schooled to respond this way when they’ve found what they’re looking for. No one wants a dog pawing and scratching at something that could explode.

“Good dog,” says Roberts. He reaches into a pouch on his belt for the kibble that is the working dog’s wage.

It would be tough to conceive of a better smelling machine than a dog. Thirty-five percent of a dog’s brain is assigned to smell-related operations, whereas a human brain lends only 5 percent of its cellular resources to the task. In her book Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz, a psychologist at Barnard College, notes that while a human might smell a teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee, a dog could detect a teaspoon in a million gallons of water—nearly enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools.

Where bomb dogs have really proved their mettle is on the battlefield. Before joining MSA as vice president of operations, Joe Atherall commanded Company C of the Marines 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in Iraq’s Al Anbar province. The unit had three dog teams attached to it.

“One day, intel directed us to a school, but we didn’t find a lot. Then we brought in the dogs,” recalls Atherall. “There were French drains around the outside of the school, and the dogs started hitting on them. When we opened them up, we found an extensive IED cache, small arms weapons, and mortar rounds, along with det cord and other explosive material.” Detonation cord is the dog whistle of odors, with nearly unsmellable vapor pressure.

“I loved those dogs,” says Atherall. “They were lifesavers.”

It is hard to imagine a more high-hearted warrior than a dog. The canines work for love, they work for praise, they work for food, but mostly they work for the fun of it. “It’s all just a big game to them,” says Mike Wynn, MSA’s director of canine training. “The best bomb dogs are the dogs that really like to play.”

This doesn’t mean that war is a lark for dogs. In 2007, Army veterinarians started seeing dogs that showed signs of canine post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We’re seeing dogs that are over-responsive to sights and sounds or that become hypervigilant—like humans that are shaken up after a car accident,” says Walter Burghardt, of the Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dog Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Caught early enough, says Burghardt, half the affected dogs can be treated and returned to active duty. “The other half just have to find something else to do for a living.”

Because of the emotional wear on the dogs, scientists have been trying to build a machine that can out-smell the animals. At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, scientists are working on ionization technology to “see” vapors the way a dog does—the same basic technology used by security officers at an airport but far more sensitive.

On the other hand, says Robert Ewing, a senior research scientist, dogs have been doing this job for years. “I don’t know that you could ever replace them.”

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This Woman Picking Up Garbage on a Country Road Will Inspire You to Protect Your Corner of the Earth

I thought she had stopped on the side of the road because of mechanical problems. The real reason was so much more inspiring.

Recently when the air turned warm and summery, I went for a drive through the local countryside. I had no destination in mind, but the sun was shining and the animals were out foraging in the forest. It was a glorious day to be alive.

Suddenly, I came upon a car on the side of the road. I watched as an older woman got out of her car and walked down to the ditch.

I wondered if she might be lost or confused? Maybe she had some mechanical problems or a medical situation. I became concerned and decided to top my car to see if I could be of any assistance. First I identified myself, and then I asked if she was all right.

She informed me that she had just stopped to pick up trash that some thoughtless traveler had tossed out the window. She invited me to look inside her car and see how much trash she had already collected.

I told her that I write articles for the local paper and asked her if I could use her name. “Oh heavens no,” she said without hesitation. “I’m not doing this for recognition. We live in some beautiful country, and I try to do my little part to help keep it that way.”

So the next time you go out for a drive, be thankful that there are people out there who choose to be good stewards of the earth. And consider taking some time to keep your little stretch of the roadside clean. You’ll get some exercise, fresh air and a good feeling knowing that you have contributed to help keep our country beautiful.

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A High School Student Attempted to Commit Suicide. You Won’t Believe What Her English Teacher Did Next.

Brittni Darras knows that letters can help save lives.

Brittni Darras, an English teacher at Rampart High School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, never expected to cry at a parent-teacher conference. That was before this past March, when one mother came to talk to Darras about why her daughter had missed so much class: Darras’ student had attempted to commit suicide, and had been hospitalized since the incident.

“Her daughter—a friendly, intelligent, beautiful, driven, young woman—not only planned to commit suicide, but was in the act of doing so when the police got a Safe 2 Tell report, broke in, and stopped her,” Darras recalls in a Facebook post. The student had even written goodbye letters and deleted her social media accounts.

Darras felt helpless and devastated by the news, so she asked the mother if she would deliver a handwritten note to her student at the hospital. Darras’ letter praised her student for her academic accomplishments and glowing personality, and told her how much she was missed in class.

“My student got the letter; her mom said that her daughter cried, turned to her mom and said, ‘How could somebody say such nice things about me? I didn’t think anybody would miss me if I was gone,’” Darras shares on Facebook.

In light of previous suicide attempts throughout the district, Darras realized the impact that one small act can have on a person’s life. She knew this type of personal encouragement was particularly essential for her students; According to the CDC, suicide is the third-leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 14 and the second-leading cause of death for those between 15 and 34. Darras sees these alarming statistics as “a direct result of the pressure we put on these kids.”

“We need to remember that each human being is unique… Instead of trying to change it, we need to embrace it.”

So over the course of the two months that followed, Darras began crafting personalized notes for each of her 130 9th and 10th grade English students at Rampart High School to remind them how important they are.

Darras gave her students the handwritten letters after their finals, each envelope marked with the student’s name and a smiley face. The letters contained personalized heartfelt messages such as “you inspire me to be a better person each day,” and “you’re a student I’ll never forget.”

“We need to remember that each human being is unique, and that is what makes them special,” Darras says. “Instead of trying to change it, we need to embrace it, because together, we can make a difference, and we can save lives!”

Darras’ story has since gone viral; her post has thousands of likes, comments, and shares. Other teachers expressed plans to write similar letters in their own classrooms, and Darras’ students and their parents came out in support of her efforts. “I’m happy to be a part of Rampart because of you Ms. Darras,” wrote Rachael Katz, one of her students. “It’s not every day that a teacher would take the time to sit down a think about every single student they have, let alone tell them how much they love them. You have made a huge difference in suicide awareness. Thank you.”

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This Grandson’s Eulogy for His Grandmother Will Touch Your Heart and Make You Long for Yours

"It didn’t take much to make her happy—a phone call, a card, a visit, or a kiss before saying good night. She lived to make our lives better and was proud of us."

Mary Foote of Harrison, Ohio, shared this heartfelt eulogy, which was delivered at the funeral of Vivian Rippy by Christopher Eckes, Mary’s nephew and one of Viv­ian’s grandsons. We include it here as a tribute to loving grandmothers everywhere.

It’s the little things that seem to stand out the most—her rolled up Kleenexes, her colorful muumuus, her iced tea and fried chicken, the aroma of her kitchen or a “yoo-hoo” from the other side of the door letting you know it was all right to come in.

I’ll remember her tapping her foot to Lawrence Welk or cheering for Johnny Bench (her favorite ball player). There are so many things that I can see and feel as if they had just happened.

I’m sure everyone here has memories much like mine. They are good memories, something we’ll always have to cherish. It isn’t often in our lives that we come across someone so special that that person stays with you forever. Grandma was that kind of person.

The only way to get hurt in this life is to care. Grandma cared more than most, loved more than most and was made to suffer more than most because of just how much she cared.

But no matter how many times she was knocked down or made to endure things that no one should, she just kept coming back; caring more and loving more—opening herself up to even more pain. Yet there were never any complaints or bitterness—it was the only way she knew how to live.

The kind of love Grandma felt for us was a love without condition. She may not have approved of everything we did, may not have liked some of the decisions we made, but she didn’t lecture, she didn’t judge. She just kept loving us, letting us know that she was there and if we ever needed her, we could count on her to listen, to comfort, to help.

She lived a simple life. It didn’t take much to make her happy—a phone call, a card, a visit or a kiss before saying good night. We were the most important people in the world to her. She lived to make our lives better and was proud of us.

To think that someone like her felt that way about us should make us all feel more than just a little good. We can never forget that there is a part of her in each of us, something that she gave to us and asked nothing for in return.

Money can be squandered and property ruined, but what we inherited from her cannot be damaged, destroyed or lost. It is permanent, and it keeps her from becoming just a wonderful memory. It allows her in so many ways to remain just as alive as always—alive through us.

There have been and will be times in our lives when situations arise where we’ll want so much to talk to her, be with her or ask her just what we should do. I hope that, when those times come, we can begin to look to each other and find that part of her that she gave to each of us.

Maybe we can learn to lean on each other and rely on each other the way we always knew that we could with her. Maybe then she won’t seem quite so far away.

So, for your wisdom, your humor, tenderness and compassion, your understanding, your patience and your love; thank you, Grandma. After you, Grandma, the mold was indeed broken. Thank you so much. I love you.

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The Utterly Brave Way a 9-Year-Old Student with Autism Saved His Teacher’s Life

A little boy who adores superheroes had an opportunity to become one.

An average school day at Oak Grove Elementary in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, took a deadly spin last April when fourth-grade teacher Madonna Kenser suffered a near-fatal allergic reaction to a dry-erase marker. Kenser inhaled the fumes while teaching the class using an overhead projector, when suddenly her throat began to close.

“I was having an asthma attack,” Kenser told KFVS12.com. “The students were watching and I knew I had to get to my desk [where my inhaler was].”

As the classroom of terrified nine-year-olds looked on, Kenser stumbled across the room but fainted before she could reach the device.

The class was stunned. Thankfully, one youngster, Brendon Garman, knew what to do. He jumped from his desk and darted toward the purse his teacher had been reaching for. Finding her inhaler, he then gave a woozy Kenser her first life-saving gasps.

It was a fearful moment, but Brendon credits his quick thinking to a scene he remembered from the movie Are We There Yet. In the scene, one of the main characters has an asthma attack and collapses. Another character rushes to his aid with an inhaler and is able to revive him.

“If I didn’t see that movie, I wouldn’t know what to do,” says Brendon.

After the rescue, he said, “You know Mrs. Kenser, TV’s not so bad, huh?,” Kenser told the news station.

Although she praises the entire class for their calm reaction, Brendon’s is the one she’ll likely remember most. Brendon has autism, a disability that can limit communication and social skills. She and Brendon’s family hope this experience will send the message that children with autism are gifted and hold the potential to do extraordinary things.

After all, Brendon’s actions saved Kenser’s life.

“I went to the doctor and he said 5,000 people die from the things that happened that day,” Kenser told KFVS12.com. “[If it weren’t for Brendon], there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be here.”

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Warning: You Will Want to Adopt an Orphaned Baby Squirrel After Reading This

Our children learned to cherish life, no matter how small, by caring for an orphan baby squirrel.

My husband, Shawn, and I enjoy seeing life through the eyes of our five children. It’s amazing to watch as they discover their world.

While we were outdoors last summer enjoying the sunshine, our oldest daughter, Kaytlin, called me to the porch. Beneath the steps was a baby red squirrel.

We watched it from a distance, not wanting to disturb it or scare off its mother. But after a long wait—and looking all around our property for traces of a nest or a mother—we realized the tiny squirrel was likely an orphan.

Shaking terribly, he was frail, thin, and hungry. We tried to find an expert to help, but the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife website showed that there were no wildlife rehabilitators in our county. After some quick research, we concluded that the best way to give the squirrel a fighting chance was to care for him ourselves. So a trip to the local Tractor Supply store for puppy formula and supplies was in order.

More extensive research taught us how much to feed him, how to estimate his age, how and when to wean him, and that we should release him as soon as he could survive on his own.

Our daughters and I shared rotations of feeding “Squirt.” Kaytlin took on the most responsibility. She taught him to eat from a syringe, and she woke in the night for his feeds.

To our relief, Squirt soon began to thrive. Within a few weeks he became more alert and active. He would chatter for his next meal, playfully crawl around on the girls, and curl up on them for a nap. It wasn’t long before he was weaned onto solid food and reintroduced to the wild.

His first few visits to the great outdoors were comical. Just like a child, he would play in the grass some and then run back to Kaytlin for safety. Soon she had him climbing trees and finding nest material.

One day in the trees, he met up with a family of gray squirrels that was none too happy about his visit. They scolded and swatted at him, and he quickly learned some social skills. For several days he played all day in the trees surrounding our house but came down at bedtime.

And then one night, he didn’t. The rain pounded hard, and our girls fretted. But when the sun rose, there was Squirt, begging for a bite to eat. And that remained the pattern for a few weeks.

Squirt became well known in our neighborhood, and visitors knew to be on the lookout when they stopped by. But mostly he played in the trees, chattering away to anyone who happened to cross his path and occasionally swiping snacks from our toddler boys.

The experience was entertaining and heartwarming for our family. In the wild and somewhat silly moments of raising an orphaned baby squirrel, our children learned to value and appreciate life.

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My Father Was Dying in the Hospital. Then Another Patient Changed Everything.

When it came time to take my dad off of life support, I felt completely helpless. Then a perfect stranger made a heartbreaking situation slightly more bearable.

I got a call from my sister that my dad had taken a turn for the worse, and I needed to get home right away. I wasn’t ready for that. When I got to the hospital, he had already slipped into a coma. I had missed all the dramatic goodbyes that were said because everyone knew he was not gonna make it. So that was upsetting.

He was in a coma for a while. It was that weird place where everybody is connected by this thing and it’s killing us. After two weeks, I brought up the idea that maybe we should pull the plug. I don’t know where that saying comes from, ’cause nobody pulls a plug. Everybody stays plugged in.

But it was time. We all knew. I thought it would happen like on Days of Our Lives. I thought you would pull the plug, and there’d be a lot of crying for ten to 15 minutes, and then the person would pass, and you would be sad, but it would be over.

Instead, we waited for four, then five, hours. And you wanted to scream, ’cause it’s crazy. Right in the middle of this, they wheel another woman into our room, a woman who had just had heart surgery. I remember thinking, That’s not a good idea. My dad is dying. Why are you bringing in a woman who’s had heart surgery? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s bad management.

The woman was on a lot of medication and saying crazy things. She’s 80 and naked and kicking her covers off. I’m on this side of the room, with a curtain that is not very soundproof, sitting by my dad, saying, “I love you, Dad. I’m really going to miss you.”

From the other side, we hear, “Cinnamon.”

“You were such a great dad to me.”

“Cinnamon.”

“Dad, you were wonderful—”

“Cinnamon.”

Finally, you can’t help laughing, because your life is exploding in front of your eyes, and it’s that moment where you’re crying and laughing. Then my husband says, “Thirty ccs of cinnamon, stat!” It killed me, and we all stopped crying for a moment and laughed really hard.

Four hours later, the nurse says, “It’s probably time. His heart rate is lowering.” We are holding his hand, and she says, “Maybe if you tell him it’s OK to go, he’ll go.”

So we all say, “Daddy, it’s OK” and “We love you,” and my mom says, “John, you were such a great dad, and I love you, and it’s OK, I’ll take care of the girls.” And across the room from the old lady in the bed, we hear, “Don’t go, John.”

Yeah.

And I remember thinking, That’s what I feel. That was what was inside me. I think I gave that woman my words: “Don’t go, John. Don’t go.”

But he did. I had my hand on his chest and his heart stopped.

Later, we found out Cinnamon Lady—that’s what I call her, Cinnamon Lady—didn’t have anyone in her life named John. I thought, Wow, that’s crazy. But we also learned she was a baker. So we understood the cinnamon part.

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‘Sesame Street’ Nearly Killed Our Son With Autism

A parent recounts a harrowing tale about raising a child with an obsessive mind.

Our oldest son, Sam, has autism and Tourette’s, with powerful obsessions and compulsions. Some were episodic, one-time things that he had to do and had to do now, like go over the barrier at the zoo’s gorilla enclosure. Climb over the fence on the edge of a 200-foot fall into Lake Superior. Wander off at sunset in the Porcupine Mountains.

Others were more periodic, things he had to do every single day for a period of six months, a year, a year and a half. Some were harmless, like the year he wore a Band-Aid on his face every single day. And some were a little more frightening, like the stretch when he had to run out and touch the yellow line in the road with his finger to a count of four.

You couldn’t stop him. He could take off while I was cooking dinner or we were all asleep. The best you could do was to try to protect him. His obsessions and compulsions were like an itch that, if he didn’t scratch it, just grew and grew. We’d survived each episode with no casualties. But when he was about eight years old, there was one that I misunderstood.

Sammy was compulsively removing the wire ties that connected our chain link fence to the upright supports and top bar. He was using his little fingers to wiggle the ties back and forth to get them loose. It was taking him forever, but he was working his way down the fence. I’d go out at night regularly with my pliers, and I’d put them all back on.

Sam is not our only child. Over the years, my wife and I have raised 17 children. At the time, we had five other children, so I’d fallen behind. One day, I looked out the back window, and I saw the fence between our house and the neighbor’s house lying flat in the grass. Over by the power lines was Sammy with a wobbling 20-foot-long pole.

We’ve learned over the years that you can’t panic, you can’t yell. That only makes a bad situation worse. So I said, “Sammy, let me have the pole. Give Papa the pole, Sammy.”

Before I could get ahold of it, he swings it. Wham! Wham! You know that gray cylindrical box attached to a utility pole where the power line goes in? He hits it hard, and as he hits it, he yells, “Oscar! Come outta you can! Come outta you garbage can, Oscar!”

He thought the transformer was Oscar’s garbage can from Sesame Street. I had thought his compulsion was bending those wires, but no—it had a singular purpose.

I said, “Sammy, Oscar doesn’t live up there. Oscar lives on the ground.”

“He live on the ground?”

“Yes, he lives on the ground.” Then I said, “If you hit that, you could die.”

“I could die?”

“You could die.”

“I could die?”

“Yes, you could die.”

So 45 minutes later, I’ve persuaded him to come inside and see the Sesame Street video and show him that Oscar does indeed live on the ground.

But I’m not foolish enough to think I’ve talked him out of his compulsion. So I run to the fencing store and buy three big bundles of those wire ties.

Navigating Sammy’s diagnoses over the past 20-some years has taught my family to appreciate the little things.

My wife summed it up beautifully on one of our family camping trips. We were sitting around the fire having a well-deserved nightcap in our little tin cups. She looked up at me and said, “Honey, it was a good day. No fatalities.”

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I Thought a Stranger Was Going to Rob Us on Vacation. What He Did Next Changed My Heart.

Never judge someone by their appearance.

Six years ago, my wife, Liz, and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. It was a lovely event hosted by our four sons and their families. Many wonderful friends from the past surprised us with best wishes and congratulations.

Our gift to each other was an extended driving trip out west. We drove from Ontario through Manitoba, Saskatchewan and into Alberta, then southward into Glacier National Park in Montana. We continued to Red Lodge, which is the gateway to Yellowstone National Park. It was late spring, and the esteemed Beartooth Highway had opened for the season just weeks before.

There was a great amount of snow remaining alongside the road. The scenery was so impressive that we made numerous stops to record memories with my camera. At roughly the highest point of the highway, we stopped at a lookout so I could capture the amazing vistas, with my wife in the center of my camera lens.

Occasionally vehicles passed by, and at one point we heard a motorcycle in the distance. The driver parked behind our vehicle. As he strode toward us, his only words were, “Give me your camera and get over there with your wife.”

I must sheepishly admit I felt nervous that we might be robbed. He took a picture of us, handed back my camera and rode off amid my awkward mumblings of gratitude. The photo he took is one of the most cherished and prized of our trip.

There is a Bible verse that says man judges by outward appearance, but God judges us by our heart. Should the wonderful gentleman who gave us this memory recognize the circumstances, we would again like to say a heartfelt thank you.

And I’ve learned my lesson not to judge others on their appearances.

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The Best Love Letter I Ever Got Came From a Near-Deaf Crime Reporter

In this true tale from the Moth, America's premier storytelling group, a woman recalls a humorous story from her early days as a journalist.

My first real job at the Miami Herald was the graveyard shift on the police beat. I was a chubby, overprotected Cuban girl from Kendall who had managed to Forrest Gump her way into a really cool job, and I spent the whole first year feeling I was on shaky ground.

They sat me next to two veteran crime reporters at the newspaper. On one side was Elaine de Valle, brash and bold. She was often screaming into her phone in Spanish, as if she were being burned at the stake by Fidel Castro. She had passion!

On the other side was Arnold Markowitz, Arnie, or Witz, if he really, really liked you. He was wild, with a shock of white hair and this white beard that he would claw in frustration if someone was being especially dumb or stupid. I was frequently both.

Because Arnie was hard of hearing, he rigged up his desk phone to a bright white light, like the kind of thing a tugboat would need to navigate foggy conditions. So every time the phone would ring, the light would flash and Arnie would pick up the phone and scream, “Markowitz! What you got?” It was terrifying, but he was a legend: unstoppable, un-scoopable. Every criminal and cop knew him, and I was determined to impress him.

That first summer, Arnie gets a call, a tip that there was a break in a cold case he had covered years ago. There was a guy who had disappeared on the way to a casino at the edge of the Everglades. Arnie gets a tip that they found his car at the bottom of a canal.

He sends me to the crime scene to see if they pulled any remains from the submerged car. I drive out to Homestead in the middle of the night, in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Somehow, I manage to talk my way onto the crime scene. I’m standing there, ankle deep in mud, and they’re winching up this old sedan, and one of the cops opens the door, and sure enough, it’s a tangle of bones and muck and weeds. Did I mention the bones?

So I scribble in my notebook and get the heck out of there because by now it’s ten minutes to deadline, and I have to call Arnie to file my feed.

Only my phone is dead, of course. So I’m driving in a blind panic in the rain, completely unhinged, praying for a pay phone. Then I see a Denny’s, like Valhalla in the distance, a Denny’s with a pay phone in front of it!

I screech like a maniac. I jump out of the car and run for the pay phone, and I notice, out of the corner of my eye, a group of potheads just kind of hanging out outside the Denny’s like potheads do. But I don’t even pay attention to them. I throw my coins in the phone and call Arnie.

He picks up. “Markowitz! What you got?” And I tell him everything: the car, the canal, the bones. And because Arnie’s hard of hearing, I have to yell all this at the top of my lungs.

So if you happened to be one of those potheads at that Denny’s on that dark and stormy night, this is what you would have seen: a chubby Cuban girl from Kendall, her legs caked in mud, her eyes streaked with rain and tears and mascara, wailing into a pay phone, “They found his bones but not a skull! His bones! In the car. They found the bones!”

I like to think that years later, those guys in the parking lot still talk about me:

“Bro, remember that girl at Denny’s?”

“Yeah, bro. She totally murdered someone. Right?”

The next day at work, I get to my desk, and there’s a note on the keyboard that says, simply, “Figueras, welcome to the craft,” signed, “Witz.”

Apologies to my husband in the back, but it was the best love letter a man has ever written me.

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A Harvard Professor Asks: How Do You Teach Patriotism to 9-Year-Olds?

It’s a Saturday morning, and I am eager to fly away. My husband and I will meet up with our son on the other side of the country to learn and explore together. Sitting now at the airport gate, my husband wanders away to stretch his legs. Moments later, he returns and whispers in my ear. I rise and follow him around the corner toward a large window facing the landing area. A crowd, solemn and still, gathers at the window and gazes out.

Now I am one of those peering in silence. On the tarmac, Marines stand straight and tall in formation, the plane door open, a ramp waiting. A white hearse is parked nearby. A man and a soldier stand on either side of a woman, supporting her, waiting for what is to come, for a sight she must surely have hoped and prayed never to see.

The ramp begins to move, and a flag-draped casket starts its descent. Airport personnel stand in reverent stillness. A few place their hands over their hearts, as I have done. We’re joined in witness, sending love to an honorable soldier whose name we’ll never know.

The woman’s face is contorted in pain as she wails in the way only a mother can, though her cries are unheard by those of us on the other side of the window. She collapses, knowing she will never again hear “Mom” from her son’s lips. She’ll never feel his loving arms encircle her shoulders or relish his sweet peck on her cheeks.

Another face, that of a square-jawed man, grimaces in pain, weakened by grief. The father holds his head in his hands and turns it back and forth, a refusal to accept this new reality. His son, the tiny boy he no doubt wrestled playfully, the teen he probably taught to drive, the son he stood so proudly by as he donned his Marine uniform, now lives only in his memory.

Those behind the glass stay silent, reflecting on this life, this loss, as the family and soldiers depart the runway. A dozen of us women, with red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks, move slowly away, dabbing our faces and sharing a mother’s profound grief.

Soon, each of us will fly off in planes and return to an ordinary life made extraordinary by this soldier’s courage, by this family’s sacrifice, and by this love shared by all who look out the window and know.

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Why I Left Flowers On a Stranger’s Grave in Russia

In this true tale from the Moth, America's premier storytelling group, a man explains a grave predicament he encountered abroad.

Last summer, after 16 years in the United States, I traveled to the city in Russia where I grew up. I was the first in my family to return after all those years. My mom gave me a hand-drawn map showing the location of my grandfather’s grave at the local cemetery, and she asked me to visit it.
When I was leaving, she asked me again.

“Are you going to go there?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”

It was really important to her that I go there. My grandfather died when I was little, and she wanted me to remember him. She would tell me stories about him. He was still very much alive in her mind, and she wanted him to continue to live in my mind as well.

But I was just too little when it all happened, so I didn’t remember much. I thought maybe this visit to his grave would make up for what she thought was her failure at keeping his memory alive.

So I promised that the first thing I’d do when I arrived would be to visit the cemetery. Well, the first thing I did when I got there was to locate my high school girlfriend.

And I got caught up in work, and I had a lot of catching up to do with my childhood friends. So it wasn’t until a day before I was leaving that I found time to go to the cemetery.

It was late in the afternoon, and right by the entrance was a lady who was selling flowers. By then she had only seven carnations left in her bucket. I bought them all, but when I reached for my wallet, I realized I didn’t have the map with me. I had no idea what had happened to that map. And I had no idea where my grandfather’s grave was located.

I could call my mom and ask her. There was a pay phone right there, and I still had ten or 15 minutes left on my calling card, and it was already morning in New York.

But the problem was that I had already told her I’d gone to the cemetery. What was I going to say? That I decided to go again but lost the map? She knows whom she’s dealing with. She’d see right through me.

So I found the main office. It actually occupied a family mausoleum. I figured some affluent family must have commissioned it but then had immigrated to the United States, and the management took advantage of the situation and moved right in.

Fortunately it was open, and inside was a small office filled with file cabinets. It looked like a financial aid office at some community college. Behind the counter was an old woman, and she said she’d help me locate my grandfather’s records.

A couple of minutes later, she came back with a printout. I was going to reach for it, but she said, “No, no; let me see it first. It’s five dollars per grave.”
I said, “Well, is there more than one?”
“Yes. There’s always more than one.”

It turned out there were 17 Abraham Pikarskis on the list. I paid for the two whose age I believed closely matched my grandfather’s.

I set off to look for them. I hoped that at least one would have a portrait on the tombstone. It is the custom with Russian immigrants here in New York to put portraits on tombstones. This way I’d know which grave was mine.

I found the first grave and it said Abraham Pikarski on it, but there was no portrait. Only an inscription: From the Loving Wife and Children.

I had no idea whether this was the right one, so I went off to look for the other one. I found it, too, and it was virtually indistinguishable from the first one. Even the granite was the same color. It said Abraham Pikarski, no portrait. The inscription was slightly different. It said: From the Grieving Family.

I had no idea what to do. Was my family the loving one or the grieving one? I was standing there waiting, thinking maybe some sort of special feeling would come to me. Maybe I’d feel some sort of kinship with the person who was lying there.

I tried to remember all I knew about my grandfather. He was a locksmith. He was a father of three. He was a soccer fan. He died of a heart attack.

I put three carnations on that grave, and I went back to the first one. I stood there, too, for a while, and again I was hoping that I’d feel something special. But it was getting late, and I remembered that I had yet to pack for the trip back to New York, so I put three carnations on this grave.

I stood there with the last flower in my hand. Which Abraham Pikarski should it go to? Should I just discard it? Should I take a flower from another grave and make sure that each Abraham Pikarski got an equal number of flowers?

I had to come up with some sort of a formula.

Then, suddenly, I knew what to do. I put that flower on that same grave where I was standing. I thought if this is really my grandfather who is lying there, then all is well and good, and he got the most. But if not, then let this be a consolation to the stranger, because somebody else’s grandson came all the way from America to pay his respects.

I went back to the hotel and flew home to New York the next day. I never found that map again.

Mom and Dad picked me up at the airport. They have this thing about picking me up at airports. Really, I would have been home at least an hour sooner if it weren’t for them. First they couldn’t find the parking lot, then they went to look for me at the wrong terminal, then they lost each other. Finally I found them, and on the way home from the airport, my mom started crying.

I asked, “Mom, why are you crying? It’s only been a week.”

She said, “I’m just so happy that you took the time to visit your grandfather’s grave. It really means so much to me. You know when you called and told me you went there, I thought you were just saying it to make me feel good.”

When I was still in the air this morning, her second cousin who lives in Russia had called and told my mother that she had just come from the cemetery and had seen my flowers there. So my mom knew that I had really done this. And she stopped crying, and she was sitting there, and she was wiping her eyes.

And I thought: Should I ask her how many flowers her second cousin saw? Three or four?

But then I decided that maybe I should not say anything at all.

Reader’s Digest is proud to partner with the Moth on storytelling “Grand Slam” events in many cities across the country, with the best stories appearing in the July/August issue of RD.

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One Astronaut’s Heart-Pounding Account of Almost Breaking the Hubble Space Telescope

His mission was to fix an instrument that could detect the atmospheres of far-off planets. One stubborn screw derailed the entire thing.

In 1984, I was a senior at Columbia and I went to see the movie The Right Stuff. And a couple of things really struck me in that movie. The first was the view out the window of John Glenn’s spaceship—the view of Earth, how beautiful it was on the big screen. I wanted to see that view. And secondly, the camaraderie between the original seven astronauts depicted in that movie—how they were good friends, how they stuck up for each other, how they would never let each other down. I wanted to be part of an organization like that.

And it rekindled a boyhood dream that had gone dormant over the years—to be an astronaut. And I just could not ignore this dream. I had to pursue it. So I was lucky enough to get accepted to MIT.

While I was there, I started applying to NASA to become an astronaut. I filled out my application, and I received a letter that said they weren’t quite interested. So I waited a couple of years, and I sent in another application. They sent me back pretty much the same letter. So I applied a third time, and this time I got an interview, so they got to know who I was. And then they told me no.

So I applied a fourth time. And on April 22, 1996, I picked up the phone, and it was Dave Leestma, the head of flight-crew operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

He said, “Hey, Mike. How you doing this morning?”

I said, “I really don’t know, 
Dave. You’re gonna have to tell me.”

He said, “Well, I think you’re gonna be pretty good after this phone call ’cause we wanna make you an 
astronaut.”

Thirteen years later, I’m on the space shuttle Atlantis, about to do a space walk on the Hubble Space Telescope. Our task that day was to repair an instrument that had failed that was used by scientists to detect the atmospheres of far-off planets. Planets in other solar systems could be analyzed using this spectrograph to see if we might find a planet that was Earth-like, or a planet that could support life. The power supply on this instrument had failed so it could no longer be used.

And there was no easy way to repair the instrument, because when they launched this thing, it was buttoned up with an access panel that blocked the power supply that had failed. This access panel had 117 small screws with washers, and just to play it safe, they put glue on the screw threads so they would never come apart.

But we really wanted this capability back, so we started working. And for five years, we designed a space walk and over 100 new space tools to be used—at great taxpayers’ expense, millions of dollars; thousands of people worked on this. And my buddy Mike Good (whom we call Bueno)—he and I were gonna do this space walk.

Inside was Drew Feustel, one of my best friends. He was gonna read me the checklist. We had practiced this for years. They built us our own practice instrument and gave us our own set of tools so we could practice in our office, in our free time, during lunch, after work, on the weekends. We 
became like one mind. We had our own language. Now was the day to go out and do this task.

The thing I was most worried about when leaving the air lock that day was my path to get to the telescope, because it was along the side of the space shuttle. If you look over the edge of the shuttle, it’s like looking over a cliff, with 350 miles to go down to the planet.

There are no good handrails. And I’m kind of a big goon. And when there’s no gravity, you could go spinning off into space. I knew I had 
a safety tether that would probably hold, but I also had a heart that I wasn’t so sure about. I knew they would get me back; I just wasn’t sure what they would get back on the end of the tether when they reeled me in. I was really concerned about this. I took my time, and I got through the treacherous path to the telescope.

One of the first things I had to do was to remove from the telescope a handrail that was blocking the access panel. There were two screws on the top, and they came off easily. There was one screw on the bottom left, and that came out easily. The fourth screw is not moving. My tool is moving, but the screw is not. I look closely, and it’s stripped. I realize that that handrail’s not coming off, which means I can’t get to the access panel with these 117 screws that I’ve been worrying about for five years, which means I can’t get to the power supply that failed, which means we’re not gonna be able to fix this instrument today, which means all these smart scientists can’t find life on other planets.

I’m to blame for this.

And I could see what they would be saying in the science books of the 
future. This was gonna be my legacy. My children and my grandchildren would read in their classrooms:

We would know if there was life on other planets … but Gabby and Daniel’s dad broke the Hubble Space Telescope, and we’ll never know.

Through this nightmare that had just begun, I looked at my buddy Bueno, next to me in his space suit, and he was there to assist in the 
repair but could not take over my role. It was my job to fix this thing. I turned and looked into the cabin where my five crewmates were, and I realized nobody in there had a space suit on. They couldn’t come out here and help me. And then I actually looked at Earth; I looked at our planet, and I thought, There are billions of people down there, but there’s no way I’m gonna get a house call on this one. No one can help me.

I felt this deep loneliness. And it wasn’t just a “Saturday afternoon with a book” alone. I felt … detached from Earth. I felt that I was by 
myself, and everything that I knew and loved and that made me feel comfortable was far away. And then it started getting dark and cold.

Because we travel 17,500 miles an hour, 90 minutes is one lap around Earth. So it’s 45 minutes of sunlight and 45 minutes of darkness. And when you enter the darkness, it is not just darkness. It’s the darkest black I have ever experienced. It’s the complete 
absence of light. It gets cold, and 
I could feel that coldness, and I could sense the darkness coming. And it just added to my loneliness.

For the next hour or so, we tried all kinds of things, and nothing worked. And then they called up and said they wanted me to go to the front of the shuttle to get a toolbox, vise grips, and tape. 
I thought, We are running out of ideas. I didn’t even know we had tape on board. I’m gonna be the first astronaut to use tape on a space walk.

But I got to the front of the space shuttle, and I opened up the toolbox, and there was the tape. At that point, I was very close to the front of the orbiter, right by the cabin window, and I knew that my best pal was in there, trying to help me out. I could not even stand to think of looking at him, because I felt so bad about the way this day was going, with all the work he and I had put in.

But through the corner of my eye, through my helmet, just the side there, I can kinda see that he’s trying to get my attention. And I look up at him, and he’s just cracking up, smiling and giving me the OK sign. And I’m like, Is there another space walk going on out here? I really can’t talk to him, because if I say anything, the ground will hear. You know, Houston. The control center. So I’m playing charades with him, like, What are you, nuts? And I didn’t wanna look before, because I thought he was gonna give me the finger because he’s gonna go down in the history books with me. But he’s saying, No, we’re OK. We’re gonna make it through this. We’re in this together. You’re doing great. Just hang in there.

If there was ever a time in my life that I needed a friend, it was at that moment. And there was my buddy, just like I saw in that movie, the 
camaraderie of those guys sticking together. I didn’t believe him at all. 
I figured that we were outta luck. But I thought, At least if I’m going down, I’m going down with my best pal.

And as I turned to make my way back over the treacherous path one more time, Houston called up and told us what they had in mind. They wanted me to use that tape to tape the bottom of the handrail and then see if I could yank it off the telescope. They said it was gonna take about 
60 pounds of force for me to do that.

And Drew answers the call, and he goes to me, “Sixty pounds of force? Mass, I think you got that in you. What do you think?”

And I’m like, “You bet, Drew. Let’s go get this thing.”

And Drew’s like, “Go!” And bam! That thing comes right off. I pull out my power tool, and now I’ve got that access panel with those 117 little bitty screws with their washers and glue, and I’m ready to get each one of them. And I pull the trigger on my power tool, and nothing happens. I look, and I see that the battery is dead. I turn my head to look at Bueno, who’s in his space suit, again looking at me like, What else can happen today?

And I said, “Drew, the battery’s dead in this thing. I’m gonna go back to the air lock, and we’re gonna swap out the battery, and I’m gonna 
recharge my oxygen tank.” Because I was getting low on oxygen; I needed to get a refill.

The light in space, when you’re in the sunlight, is the brightest, whitest, purest light I have ever experienced, and it brings with it warmth. I actually started feeling optimistic.

He said, “Go.” And I was going back over that shuttle, and I noticed two things. One was that the treacherous path that I was so scaredy-cat-sissy-pants about going over—it wasn’t scary anymore. That in the course of those couple of hours 
of fighting this problem, 
I had gone up and 
down that thing about 20 times, and my fear had gone away because there was no time to be a scaredy-cat; it was time to get the job done. What we were doing was more important than me being worried, and it was actually kinda fun going across that little jungle gym, back and forth over the shuttle.

The other thing I noticed was that 
I could feel the warmth of the sun. We were about to come into a day pass. And the light in space, when you’re in the sunlight, is the brightest, whitest, purest light I have ever experienced, and it brings with it warmth. I could feel that coming, and I actually started feeling optimistic.

Sure enough, the rest of the walk went well. We got all those screws out, a new power supply in, buttoned it up. They tried it; turned it on from the ground. The instrument came back to life. And at the end of that space walk, after about eight hours, my commander says, “Hey, Mass, you know, you’ve got about 15 minutes before Bueno’s gonna be ready to come in. Why don’t you go outside of the air lock and enjoy the view?”

So I go outside, take my tether, clip it on a handrail, let go, and I just look. And Earth—from our altitude at Hubble, we’re 350 miles up. We can see the curvature. We can see the roundness of our home, our home planet. It’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like looking into heaven. It’s paradise.

And I thought, This is the view that I imagined in that movie theater all those years ago. As I looked at Earth, I also noticed that I could turn my head, and I could see the moon and the stars and the Milky Way galaxy. I could see our universe. I could turn back and see our beautiful planet.

And that moment changed my relationship with Earth. Because for me, Earth had always been a kind of safe haven, you know, where I could go to work or be in my home or take my kids to school. But I realized it really wasn’t that. It really is its own spaceship. And I had always been a space traveler. All of us here today, even 
tonight, we’re on this spaceship Earth, amongst all the chaos of the universe, whipping around the sun and around the Milky Way galaxy.

A few days later, we get back. And I’m driving home to my house with my family. My wife starts telling me that while watching the NASA television she detected a sadness in my voice that she had never heard from me before.

And we turned the corner to come down our block, and I could see my neighbors were outside. They had decorated my house, and there were American flags everywhere. And my neighbor across the street was holding a pepperoni pizza and a six-pack of beer, two things that unfortunately we still cannot get in space.

I got out of the car, and they were all hugging me. I was still in my blue flight suit, and they were saying how happy they were to have me back and how great everything turned out. I realized my friends, man, they were thinking about me the whole time. They were with me too. I wish I would’ve known that when I was up there.

The next day we had our return ceremony; we made speeches. The engineers who had worked all these years with us, our trainers, the people that worked in the control center, they started telling me how they were running around like crazy while I was up there in my little nightmare, thinking I was all alone.

I realized that at the time when I felt so lonely, when I felt detached from everyone else—literally, like I was away from the planet—that really I never was alone, that my family and my friends and the people I worked with, the people that I loved and the people that cared about me, they were with me every step of the way.


Michael Massimino, PhD, is a veteran of two NASA space flights (STS-109 in March 2002 and STS-125 in May 2009) and has logged a total of 571 hours, 47 minutes in space, and a cumulative total of 30 hours, 4 minutes during four spacewalks. A graduate of Columbia University and MIT, Michael is a professor at the Columbia University School of Engineering and is a Senior Advisor at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, as well as a sought after inspirational speaker. Mike appears regularly on television news and talk shows, and has appeared on The Big Bang Theory six times. Follow Mike on Twitter at @Astro_mike or visit his website at www.mikemassimino.com. Mike’s upcoming memoir, SPACEMAN, will be published by Crown Archetype October 2016.

This story was told before a crowd at a “Grand Slam” storytelling event hosted by the Moth in New York City. Reader’s Digest is proud to partner with the Moth on similar events in cities across the country, with the best stories to appear in the July/August issue of RD

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The Reunion That Took 77 Years to Happen

A teenaged Minka Disbrow was forced to give her newborn daughter Betty Jane up for adoption in 1929, but she never stopped thinking about her baby. Nearly 80 years later, Betty Jane—now named Ruth—found her.

The car was pulling in.

Minka’s heart was pounding, but her legs carried her forward. Off to the side, she saw Grant already in the driveway with his video camera.

Faces flashed through the car windows. She squinted at the front passenger seat, but Betty Jane was not there. Through the tinted back window, she saw a blaze of white hair. Minka stepped forward, opened the rear door, and was met with a great spray of flowers.

From behind them, she saw her daughter’s face, the one she’d seen only in photographs, and heard the voice she’d heard only over the phone.

Everything disappeared behind one longing. To get her daughter into her arms. And then, she was.

Minka’s sight blurred. Her voice stuck in her throat. Her arms wrapped tightly around her girl, hands clenched against her back. She’d waited more than 28,000 days for this, her daughter safe in her embrace. The joy of it was boundless.

Betty Jane. Her Betty Jane, returned to her at last. The infant, the little girl, the teenager, the young mother, the grandmother. Here was Betty Jane as a chubby baby, playing dress up, losing her first tooth, putting on lipstick, wearing a wedding dress, expecting her first baby, her fourth, her sixth. Here was Betty Jane as a new grandmother, an empty nester, an elderly woman. Here was everything all at once, a lifetime in a moment.

Minka had missed every second of it but she had waited, she had waited forever and she had kept her promise, she had never ­forgotten—­and now, impossibly, her Betty Jane had been given back to her.

Finally Minka let go a little, pulling back to see that dear face ­again—­a face as lined as her own, and familiar only from recent photographs. But Minka believed she recognized those pale blue eyes. She looked into them, and then her daughter pressed in again and kissed her cheek. Minka managed to speak, her words pushing through a throat thickened by the weight of a million “I love you”s that had never been spoken.

“You’re as wonderful . . . as I thought you would be,” Minka said.

Her daughter was pressing flowers into her arms, and Teresa came forward for a hug, and then here was Brian, the grandson who had brought her girl home. The moment whirled around Minka; she tried to capture it but was swept away.

She hugged Brian, gripping so tightly that Brian’s first, laughing words were, “Not so hard, Grandma!”

Overcome, Minka began to shake and nearly stumbled. Ruth and Brian put their arms around her, steadying her. They turned toward Teresa’s camera for a picture.

“The power of God . . . ” Minka said, thinking of the decades of prayer that had led to this very moment.

“Wow,” Teresa said as she lowered the camera and took in the two women. They didn’t look like strangers meeting for the first time. There was something weaving them together, undeniably, right before their eyes.

“How about that,” Brian said.

Grant had been videotaping from the moment Minka came down the walkway. He struggled to keep the camera level as he received hugs and gave welcomes. Emotion was thick in his throat too.

Minka leaned her forehead against Ruth’s face. They held each other.

“This is something, isn’t it,” Ruth said. She beamed. “­Seventy-­seven years.”

Minka’s thoughts bounced back and forth between those perfect days with her newborn daughter at the House of Mercy to Betty Jane at this moment, back to the day of ­good-­bye and now together again.

“You finally got back into your mother’s arms,” Minka said, squeezing her daughter. “It took you long enough,” she gently teased.

Minka gripped the bouquet in one arm, Ruth in the other.

“What a glorious day,” Minka said.

“Yes, it is,” Ruth agreed. “Yes, it is.”

“Well, come in,” Minka said, sighing with contentment. “You might as well get acquainted with your home.”

Ruth went on to forge a sister-like friendship with Minka, who passed away June 16, 2014 at the age of 102. This excerpt was taken from the memoir The Waiting by Cathy LaGrow, daughter of Minka’s second child. Copyright © 2014. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Heartwrenching: This Is What U.S. Soldiers Do to Honor Their Fallen Comrades Overseas

Long before a fallen soldier's family hears the news, his comrades perform a solemn, powerful ceremony: the hero-ramp.

while embedded with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, photographer and war correspondent Robert L. Cunningham witnessed a rare and chilling ritual: the hero-ramp ceremony.

“Robert took this photograph at a forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan, capturing the silence and solemnity of a hero-ramp ceremony,” says author Steven Hartov, who worked alongside Cunningham to publish the 2014 book of photo essays, Afghanistan: On the Bounce.

“Just fallen in combat, draped in an American flag, a soldier passes through a cordon of comrades. This is a moment of secrets kept, for only his warrior brothers and sisters know that he is gone. It will be some time before his wife gasps with the news. His parents and children haven’t yet been informed. Only later will they know that 200 souls wept here with him and served as his most devoted bearers to that final fight.”

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The Husband Who Vanished

For 15 years, Anne McDonnell lived in limbo—not knowing whether her Jim was dead or alive. Then one afternoon the doorbell rang.

The Mc­Donnells lived in a small brick house in Larch­mont, a suburb of New York City. Jim was foreman of mail carriers at the post office where he had worked for 25 years. A gentle, soft­-spoken man, he had a wave­ of­ the ­hand acquaintance with hundreds of peo­ple in town. Married in 1960, he and Anne were childless.

During February and March 1971, when he was 50, Jim McDonnell suffered a curious series of accidents. None was critical in it­self, but the combination appeared to trigger a strange result.

Carrying out the garbage one evening, he slipped on ice­-coated steps, bruised his back and struck his head. A few days later, driving to work, he had a fit of sneezing, lost control of the car, hit a telephone pole and banged his forehead against the windshield. The following day a dizzy spell at work sent him tumbling down a flight of steps, and again he banged his head. Ten days later he again lost control of his car and hit a pole. Found unconscious, he was hospitalized for three days with a cerebral concussion.

On March 29, 1971, Jim borrowed a friend’s station wagon and drove to Kennedy Airport to pick up Anne’s brother and family. Then he took them to Anne’s sister’s house. When he returned the borrowed car at 10 p.m., he was unaware that the leather folder containing his identification had slipped out of his pocket onto the floor of the station wagon. Jim declined the offer of a ride home: “I have a terrible headache and the walk will help clear my head.” Ordinarily the walk would have taken about 15 minutes.

At 11:15 p.m. Anne called the owner of the station wagon; he had no idea why Jim had not yet reached home. It was unlike Jim not to telephone if he was delayed. At 2 a.m., Anne called the police and reported her husband missing.

After 24 hours, the police sent out an all­-points bulletin and began writing some 50 letters to Jim’s friends and relatives. They fol­lowed through on every anonymous tip and even checked unidentified bodies in New York morgues.

Detective George Mulcahy was assigned to head the investigation. He knew Jim was a man of probity and openness—the two attended the same church—and Mulcahy was sure the disappearance had nothing to do with wrong­doing by Jim McDonnell. Investigation confirmed that McDonnell’s per­sonal and professional records were impeccable, and turned up no tendencies toward self­ destruction or any evidence that he had been a victim of an accident or attack.

For Mulcahy, the only explana­tion was amnesia.

The phenomenon of amnesia is clouded in mystery. Why it occurs in some patients and not in oth­ers is open to medical speculation. What is known is that loss of mem­ory can be caused by stroke, Alz­heimer’s disease, alcoholism, severe psychological trauma—or by blows to the head. Any individual whose brain has suffered such inju­ries can simply wander aimlessly away from the place where he lives, with all knowledge of his past blacked out.

“For weeks,” Anne’s sister re­calls, “Anne walked the house wringing her hands and praying. She agreed that Jim could be a victim of amnesia—and she wor­ried about his health. Anne was sustained by her deep trust in God. She felt that one day he would provide an answer.”

Anne remained alone in the house, waiting. At night, watching television, she would stare at the over­stuffed hassock where Jim had dozed off evenings. She often dreamed he had come home, only to wake up and find he wasn’t there.

Soon after Jim’s disappearance Anne realized she had to earn a living. She took babysitting jobs, was a supermarket checker and worked in a hospital cafeteria. In 1977 she took her current job as a nursing attendant.

Anne fell into the habit of work­ing at the hospital on holidays be­cause it was easier if she kept busy. I’ve got to go on, live as best I can, she told herself. Through it all, she had faith that Jim would return. She kept his clothes in the closet covered to protect them from dust. His razor and can of shaving cream remained in the bathroom cabinet.

During his walk home, Jim had indeed blacked out, losing all abili­ty to remember who he was and where he lived. What happened then is unclear. He may have taken the train to Grand Central Termi­nal, then another train or a bus south. The next thing he knew, he was in downtown Philadelphia, a city he had never visited before.

Seeing signs advertising the serv­ices of a James Peters, a real­ estate broker, Jim adopted James Peters as his own name. It never occurred to him to seek assistance at a police station or hospital. He had no past; his only reality was the present.

James Peters got a Social Securi­ty card, which could be obtained at that time without showing a birth certificate, and took a job in the luncheonette of a health club. He next worked at a cancer ­research institute, cleaning out animal cages. He also got a night­shift job at the P&P luncheonette, where he became well­ known for his omelets, as well as his courtesy and good humor. After a year he felt he was estab­lished at P&P and quit his job at the cancer institute.

Jim made new friends, joined an American Legion post and the Knights of Columbus, and became an active member of the St. Hugh Roman Catholic Church.

He never talked about his past, and his friends didn’t pry. One once said to him, “From your accent, you must be from New York.”

Jim replied, “I guess so.”

To Cheryle Sloan, a waitress at P&P, Jim was special: “He loved kids. At Christmastime, he played Santa Claus at orphanages. He grew a big white beard to make his appearance more authentic. Of course we wondered about his past. My mother decided that he had to be an ex-priest or an ex-­criminal.”

Bernadine Golashovsky recalls: “Soon after Jim started at P&P, I took a job there as a waitress. My father had died and Jim apparently had no family, so we adopted each other. He became my father figure, and we—my husband, Pete, our four children and I—were his fam­ily. The children loved him.”

About a month before Christmas 1985, Bernadine noticed that Jim had grown unusually quiet and subdued. Something seemed to be turning in his mind.

On Thanksgiving Day, Jim visit­ed the family and sat watching television with Pete. A scene ap­peared in which a mail carrier was making deliveries on a miserably rainy day. Pete said, “Boy, that’s one job I wouldn’t want.”

Jim frowned and said, “I think I used to be a postman.”

“Really? Where?”

“I don’t know,” Jim answered.

“New York?”

“I’m not sure. But I think I remember my parents a little.”



Jim spent ev­ery major holiday with Bernadine and Pete. On Christmas Eve he always arrived late because the Golashovskys were his last stop on his rounds of wish­ing friends a hap­py holiday. On this Christmas Eve he never ar­rived. Bernadine and Pete stayed up all night waiting for him.

On December 22, Jim had fall­en and banged his head. The next day at work he seemed distracted, and late that afternoon he had fallen again, striking his head. On De­cember 24, he awoke feeling confused, yet elated. After almost 15 years, he knew who he was! He was James A. McDonnell, Jr., of Larchmont, New York. His wife’s name was Anne. Then, suddenly, he was scared: Is Anne alive? Has she remarried? If not, how will she greet me?

Anne had just returned home from Christmas Mass, where she lit candles and prayed for Jim. A light snow was falling, and she was in a hurry to leave for Christmas dinner at her sister’s before the roads grew slick.

Then the doorbell rang, Oh, my she thought, this is not a good time for a visitor.

Anne opened the door—and peered at a man with a full white beard. Immedi­ately she recog­nized Jim. She couldn’t speak.

To Jim, Anne looked a little older, but pretti­er too. His heart overflowed.

“Hello, Anne,” he said.

“Jim,” she gasped. “Is it true?” Her breathing came in bursts, as if she had been running. “Oh, I’m glad you’re home. Come in, come in.” They barely touched hands. They were too stunned to fall into each other’s arms. The embraces and the tears would come later.

Anne led Jim to his favorite seat, the over­stuffed hassock. They be­gan to talk, trying to fill in the gaps in time. Finally, Jim’s eyes grew heavy. Exhausted and happy, he dozed off.

After 15 years, Jim McDonnell was home at last.

On the day after Christmas, Jim reported his return to the police. That evening the Golashovskys received a phone call from a New York Daily News reporter who told them Jim was fine. Bernadine phoned Jim’s friends with the good news.

A week after his return Jim had a complete physical, including a CAT scan of his brain. The conclusion: he was in normal health, Jim and Anne have had no prob­lems resuming their lives as a married couple. “Each day we are together,” Jim says, “makes the time we were apart seem shorter.”

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This Man Ordered Domino’s Pizza Almost Daily For 10 Years. It Just Might Have Saved His Life.

When Kirk Alexander went missing for 11 days, an unlikely savior came to his rescue: his neighborhood pizza store.

Almost every night for more than 10 years, Kirk Alexander, 48, of Salem, Oregon ordered a late dinner from his local Domino’s pizza store. He had no signature order—sometimes he would call for a salad, sometimes a pie, sometimes chicken wings—the only sure thing for the staff of the Silverton Road Domino’s was that they would see Alexander’s name show up on their online ordering site sometime between 11 p.m. and midnight several times a week.

Until suddenly, for nearly two weeks at the end of April 2016, they didn’t.

It was a slow Saturday night on May 7th when Domino’s general manager Sarah Fuller felt she could no longer ignore Alexander’s recent absence.

“A few of my drivers had mentioned that we hadn’t seen his order come across our screen in a while, so I went and looked up to see how long it had been since he last ordered,” Fuller told KATU.com. “It was 11 days, which is not like him at all.”

Fuller had known Alexander since 2009, when she started at the Domino’s store as a delivery driver and regularly made the short trip to Alexander’s home about six minutes away. She knew Alexander worked from home, and neighbors said he rarely left. She also knew that he had suffered some health issues in the past. Something, Fuller worried, was wrong.

Around 1 a.m. on Sunday, May 8, Fuller sent longtime delivery driver Tracey Hamblen to stop in at Alexander’s home. Hamblen approached Alexander’s door as he had countless times before and knocked. He could plainly see that Alexander’s TV set was on, as were his lights; but after several minutes, Alexander still didn’t answer the door.

Seriously worried now, Hamblen called Alexander directly. His phone went straight to voicemail.

Hamblen rushed back to the store to relay the upsetting developments to Fuller. While she tried to reach the authorities on a non-emergency number, she encouraged Hamblen to dial 911. Soon, officers were on their way.

When deputies from the Marion County Sheriff’s office arrived at Alexander’s house, they heard a man “calling for help from inside the residence,” deputies said. They broke the door down, and found Alexander on the floor “in need of immediate medical attention.” One day later, and they might have been too late.

Alexander was rushed to Salem Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition shortly after Sunday’s dramatic rescue. In the following weeks, Fuller, Hamblen, and other store employees went to visit him with flowers and cards, noting that Alexander greeted them with knowing smiles. Their role in his rescue did not seem lost on Alexander, though to Fuller, it was all just part of the job.

“[Alexander is] just an important customer that’s part of our family here at Domino’s,” she told KOIN.com “He orders all the time so we know him. I think we were just doing our job checking in on someone we know who orders a lot. We felt like we needed to do something.”

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How Presidents Met Their First Ladies: 10 True Love Stories to Make You Say ‘Awww’

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

In 1758 Martha Dandridge Curtis was 27 and recently widowed, and a very wealthy woman. That year George Washington, also 27 and already a colonel in the Virginia militia (and not at all wealthy) met Martha via the Virginia high-society social scene and proceeded to court her. Courtship was quick, and they were married in January 1759, in what at the time was viewed as a marriage of convenience. They were, however, happily married for 41 years. (Note: The marriage took place at the plantation that Martha owned, in what was called the “White House.”)

When Johnny Met Louisa

Louisa Catherine Johnson, who was born in London, met John Quincy Adams at her home in Nantes, France, in 1779. She was 4; he was 12. Adams was traveling with his father, John Adams, who was on a diplomatic mission in Europe. The two met again in 1795 in London, when John was a minister to the Netherlands. He courted her, all the while telling her she’d have to improve herself if she was going to live up to his family’s standards (his father was vice president at the time). She married him anyway, in 1797, and his family made it no secret that they disapproved of the “foreigner” in their family. Nevertheless, they were married until John Quincy Adams’s death in 1848. Louisa remains the only foreign-born First Lady in U.S. history.

When Johnny Met Louisa

Louisa Catherine Johnson, who was born in London, met John Quincy Adams at her home in Nantes, France, in 1779. She was 4; he was 12. Adams was traveling with his father, John Adams, who was on a diplomatic mission in Europe. The two met again in 1795 in London, when John was a minister to the Netherlands. He courted her, all the while telling her she’d have to improve herself if she was going to live up to his family’s standards (his father was vice president at the time). She married him anyway, in 1797, and his family made it no secret that they disapproved of the “foreigner” in their family. Nevertheless, they were married until John Quincy Adams’s death in 1848. Louisa remains the only foreign-born First Lady in U.S. history.

When Gracie Met Calvin

One day in 1903, Grace Anna Goodhue was watering flowers outside the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she taught. At some point, she looked up and saw a man through the open window of a boardinghouse across the street. He was shaving, his face covered with lather, and dressed in his long johns. He was also wearing a hat. Grace burst out laughing, and the man turned to look at her. That was the first meeting of Grace and Calvin Coolidge. They were married two years later.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

When Harry Met Bessie

In 1890, when they were both small children, Harry Truman met Bess Wallace at the Baptist Church in Independence, Missouri. They were both attending Sunday school. He was six; she was five. Truman later wrote of their first meeting: “We made a number of new acquaintances, and I became interested in one in particular. She had golden curls and has, to this day, the most beautiful blue eyes. We went to Sunday school, public school from the fifth grade through high school, graduated in the same class, and marched down life’s road together. For me she still has the blue eyes and golden hair of yesteryear.” Bess and Harry were married in 1919.

When Lyndie Met Lady Bird

Lyndon Baines Johnson met Claudia “Lady Bird” Taylor in 1934, a few weeks after she’d graduated from the University of Texas. Johnson was a 26-year-old aide to Texas congressman Richard Kleberg, and was in Austin, Texas, on business. They went on a single breakfast date, at the end of which Johnson proposed marriage. She said she’d think about it. He returned to Washington, and sent her letters and telegrams every day until he returned to Austin 10 weeks later, when she accepted. “Sometimes,” she later wrote about her husband, “Lyndon simply takes your breath away.”

 When Richie Met Pattie

Thelma “Pat” Ryan graduated from the University of Southern California in 1937 at the age of 25. She got a job as a high school teacher in Whittier, a small town not far from Los Angeles, and became a member of the amateur theatrical group the Whittier Community Players. In 1938 Richard Nixon, a 26-year-old lawyer who had just opened a firm in nearby La Habra, joined the theater group, thinking that acquiring acting skills would help him in the courtroom. In their first performance, Nixon was cast opposite Ryan. He asked her out, and asked her to marry him on their first date. They were married three years later.

When Ronnie Met Nancy

Ronald Reagan wrote in his autobiography that he first met Nancy Davis when she came to him for help. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild, and she couldn’t get a job acting in movies because another Nancy Davis’s name had shown up on the Hollywood blacklist of alleged communists. But according to Jon Weiner’s book Professors, Politics, and Pop, SAG records show that Nancy’s blacklist problem occurred in 1953, a year after the Reagans were married. So how did they meet? Reagan biographer Anne Edwards says that in 1949 Nancy, who had just become an MGM contract player, told a friend of Reagan’s that she wanted to meet him. The friend invited the two to a small dinner party, and the rest is history.

When Georgie Met Laura

Joe and Jan O’Neill lived in Midland, Texas, and were childhood friends of Laura Welch. In 1975 another childhood friend, George W. Bush, came back to Midland after being away for a few years. The O’Neills bugged Laura to go out with George, but she didn’t want to. She later said that the O’Neills were only trying to get them together “because we were the only two people from that era in Midland who were still single.” She finally agreed to meet him at a backyard barbecue in 1977, when she was 30 and he was 31. George was smitten;Laura was, too. They were married three months later.

When Barry Met Michelle

In 1989 Michelle Robinson was working at a Chicago law firm when she was assigned to mentor a summer associate from Harvard with a “strange name”: Barack Obama. Not long after, Barack, 27, asked Michelle, 25, on a date. She later admitted that she was reluctant to date one of the few black men at the large firm because it seemed “tacky.” Robinson finally relented, and after dating for several months, she suggested they get married. He wasn’t interested. One night in 1991, during dinner at a Chicago restaurant, she brought it up again. Again, he said no. But when dessert showed up, there was an engagement ring in a box on one of the plates. They were married in 1992.

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